Business Lessons from sucessful entrepreneurs and business leaders: LunchLearning.com

Reading time: 3 - 4 minutes

Video Time: 41 minutes 49 seconds

We’ll be wrapping up this week with a look at a somebody who, like some of this week’s predecessors, took on a serious subject and transformed it through humor. However, this time, instead of operating through print has his medium, we’ll be looking at somebody who works visually and aurally, delivering the bitter punchline with practiced poise. Jon Stewart, somewhere between a comedian, satirist, politico and reporter, is, in many ways, as powerful a representative of the news as traditional outlets like CNN.

What exactly did one man do to achieve such clout? He did something so extraordinarily simple that it hardly seems like anything noteworthy: he reached an entirely new segment of the population. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart features a nightly viewership of over one million individuals, many of which utilize the show as their primary source of news and, even more tellingly, did not watch news programs of any kind before. Despite it being a comedy program, the show is widely regarded to be as valid as many other sources of news.

Despite its appearance, the success of The Daily Show is largely about noticing an untapped market and the discovery of exactly what that market wants. The blend of wit and news, wrapped in a thick layer of truthiness (as popularized by Stewart’s contemporary, Stephen Colbert) was viewed as a respite from traditional news media outlets that were perceived as grim, packed with fluff, biased and often downright misleading. However, regardless of what studies show and proponents claim, Stewart tries to hammer home that he is not a journalist and his show is not real news. In either case, people love him and the show is an unequivocal success.

The following video is a biographical sketch of Jon Stewart, actually the second host of The Daily Show, but the one that introduced its current political leanings and brought it to stardom. While the easiest way to understand the draw, and hence the marketing insight, of The Daily Show would be to watch it in the company of individuals in the younger generation, an exploration of the man, and what put him there, is second best.

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Reading time: 2 - 4 minutes

Video Time: 56 minutes 11 seconds

The idea of Avon Products inspires a wide range of thoughts ranging from the image of door-to-door saleswomen and house parties to that of top-line perfumes and men’s fashion. However, two things that generally do not leap to mind is a fashion juggernaut and an enabler for thousands of women across the country. As a company sometimes referred to as ‘The Company of Women’, it is only natural to find a woman standing at its helm: Andrea Jung, currently ranked as the sixth most powerful woman in the United States according to Fortune Magazine. She is a critical piece of the force of Avon and a figure well worth considering.

However, to truly grasp the concepts that drive Avon, we have to step back an era. Before women were even permitted to vote, much less be accepted in the workplace, the original founder of Avon, under the name of the California Perfume Company, decided to work with a predominantly female sales force. The spiritual element, in addition to the business logic, of female independence resonated with the company and proved to be a potent asset.

Maintaining this spirit of supporting women’s independence has done much to encourage the longevity of Avon by pushing them to explore new markets and giving the company a core concept to rally around through the ages. This center on aiding women has pushed the company to enter markets where other companies have shied away from, such as in developing countries, where women are just beginning to enter the economic environment, and grow in times of poor economic growth from people with an entrepreneurial spirit being laid off seeking new opportunities.

This video looks at a variety of elements, from the importance of spirit, constant reinvention, and the capacity to do multiple things at the same time. Whether it’s the ability to look forward at the future without losing sight of what brought you to that point or to strive towards an ideal while remaining grounded in reality, Andrea Jung is a potent woman at the head of a powerful company that has its very spirit geared towards uplifting peoples.

Reading time: 4 - 6 minutes

Total Video Time: 34 minutes 35 seconds and 44 minutes 29 seconds

Wrapping up this week with a return to technological changes, we’re looking at a movement that has steadily gained momentum over the last few years. Open source software, or publicly developed software, is something that is having a degree of impact on today’s computing that has not been seen yet. Programs like Firefox, the second most commonly used web browser, and the operating systems on many netbooks are open source. This subject is also particularly timely as yesterday heralded a rather significant milestone: the official release of Windows 7.

Robert S. Sutor, the vice-president of Open Source and Linux at IBM and is speaking on innovations, impact, and the sheer importance of the concept of open.
. Sutor has also been named one of Open Source’s VIPs by Computer Business Review for working with people to explain the values of open source and spur adoption in business environments.

The first conflict has its roots in ideology, but has a very real impact on the way any project is managed and developed: and that is simply: what is “open?” Sutor proposes that for something to be truly open, it must be developed transparently and with unrestricted participation from the public. Even more fundamentally, is the question of who is leading the project, and for what reasons are they an authoritative figure? While these might seem like fundamentals obvious in a business environment, with open source projects, they are vital to consider.

In addition to Robert Sutor, we’ll also be taking a look at a panel from LinuxCon 2009 (@linuxfoundation on Twitter) involving a number of specialists in the field including, Noah Broadwater, Anthony Roby, David Buckholtz (@dbuckho on Twitter) and Jeffery Hammond (@jhammond on Twitter) who discuss the impact of open source in business. For those of you short on time and more interested in open source as a part of business strategy, skip directly to the second video.

It is also worth noting that mature open source is not merely a stand-in for a commercial solution. In many cases, such as with Apache HTTP Server, it has become the de facto standard. To illustrate this, the panel discusses how, in many cases, open source is like much like our perception of a Honda vehicle:while it may lack the fancy features of a Cadillac, it’s just as reliable — and far cheaper. The advantages of open source are not just in ideology, but in how they benefit business — particularly small and medium businesses. I hope this was an enjoyable, educational and thought-provoking week! Remember to always think about what the world was like and there things are headed since you’re going to be living in that upcoming world very shortly—and your actions today, will determine your success then.

Think of the past, envision the future!

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Reading time: 3 - 4 minutes

Video Time: 24 minutes 55 seconds

Hello, my name is Alan Chang and if you’ve followed us before, you’ll know that we here at LunchLearning explore a different theme every week and if you haven’t—we do. This week, we’ll be looking at paradigm shifts that have transformed entire industries as well as newborn technologies and platforms that have the potential to bring about change yet haven’t quite matured and reached their full potential yet.

Nikesh Arora (@nikesharora on Twitter), one of the presidents of Google and responsible for strengthening their core business, discusses the gap in technology usage between generations. In addition to giving Google the focus they had lost when they grew, he was a critical piece of the puzzle for a number of other businesses, such as T-Mobile, whose industries had changed dramatically through the years.

Changes in the market are obvious in hindsight, but the secret to their importance, and success in their utilization, is to understand what is a revolutionary product and what isn’t. Mobile phones were once considered an elite product, with only the richest and most important people owning them. Similarly, until recently, as Brandon Shook explored last week, games were considered best for targeting children. Things have changed.

Social networks are rapidly increasing in prominence, visibility as well as importance. However, knowing that something is going to become the standard is not enough. Being able to determine exactly who the winner will be even a few years in advance can make a tremendous difference. Just as the landscape of the internet was different ten years ago, it will be something entirely different in ten more years. Taking steps to capitalize on these changes will strengthen your position.

Within this video, Nikesh Arora briefly considers a variety of areas ranging from viral marketing and interacting with customers to company reach and market research. All of these things, and more, have changed throughout the years and will continue to. Equally important, each of these can be directly attributed to the success of failure of a company. Somebody has to succeed, so why not you?

Think of the past, envision the future!

Reading time: 4 - 7 minutes

Total Video Time: 33 minutes 38 seconds

Today I want to talk about Rock Band Network (RBN) and how bands can use this amazing new tool to market themselves. However, before you can understand RBN you need to know about Rock Band the game. Whether you’ve heard about them or not music games like Rock Band have become a huge phenomena in the gaming industry. Rock Band allows you live out your childhood fantasy of becoming a rock star without those pesky addictions that have ruined the lives of so many of rock’s icons.

Here’s how the game works, you are given a set of peripherals in the shape of guitars, drums and microphones. Each peripheral, except for the mic, has colored buttons. You can grab up to three friends and pick a song from Rock Band’s music library and start playing. As you play the game you will notice colored bars scrolling down the screen at the same speed as the beat. Your job is to press the corresponding colored buttons on your peripheral at the same time the colored bars pop up on the screen and voilà, you have just learned the basics of Rock Band.

Rock Band comes complete with a large selection of songs already on the game, but you have the option of downloading more songs to expand your music library. You can choose to play songs from legendary bands like The Beatles, Metallica, and Iron Maiden or choose from more current bands like Fall Out Boy, Weezer, and Bon Savants…wait, who was that last one? This is where RBN steps in and lets indie bands like Bon Savants convert their music into tracks that can played on Rock Band. This is a huge, like I said in my previous post the video game audience is large and expanding. This is a great opportunity for indie bands to present their music to people who otherwise would not know they existed.

Bon Savants is one of the first bands to take the jump into this new form of music distribution, but I hardly doubt they will be the last. In their video blog they explain how RBN works as well as the difficulties they faced while converting their tracks into sound files for the game. Unfortunately, Bon Savants has not finished making their Rock Band tracks so their video blog is incomplete. To finish the lesson, I supplemented Caleb Epps’ presentation and tutorial about RBN. Most of Caleb’s first video reiterates what Bon Savants talked about except Caleb presents RBN from the developers perspective. If you’re impatient like I am you can skip to 3:37 of Caleb’s first video and pick up where Bon Savants left off. Caleb rounds out the tutorial by explaining how to polish the finished tracks and market the the music on RBN.

If you’re like me and are interested in learning more about Bon Savants check out their website here at http://bonsavants.com.

Hope you enjoy the learning and Game On!

Reading time: 4 - 6 minutes

Video Time: 45 minutes 27 seconds

NOTE: To watch the full program, you’ve got to unfortunately click on “View Full Program” to the right of the volume control in the video. It seems like they’ve got their codes mixed up a bit.

It’s my turn to take control of the entrepreneurship stories for a week and I’m going to talk about what’s near and dear to my heart and that is video games. Now you might be thinking, “Video games? Those things are for kids.” Yes, some video games are geared towards kids, but researchers at Pew Internet & American Life Project report in their study, Adults and Video Games that a whopping 53% of adults and 97% of teens play video games. Combine that data with the increasing popularity of video games in today’s pop culture and it’s easy to see that video games, if done correctly, can be an effective tool for entrepreneurs. In my series entitled, Gaming to Success, I will highlight how video games can inspire individuals to reach their life’s goal.

We kick things off with a look at video game journalists and the struggles they face when reporting the news. The journalists on this panel consist of N’Gai Croal (@ncroal on Twitter), General Editor of Newsweek; Geoff Keighley (@geoffkeighley on Twitter), executive producer of GameTrailers TV with Geoff Keighley; Seth Schiesel, reporter for the New York Times; Mike Snider (@MikeSnider on Twitter) reporter for USA Today; and Ted Price, President and CEO of Insomniac Games, as moderator. Now the reason I listed off their names with their positions was to make a point. These guys aren’t sweaty pimply nerds living in the basement of their parent’s homes wasting their lives away. No, these are prominent figures in their respective fields of gaming and journalism.

One of the main topics that bounced around during their session was the stereotyping of people who play video games. Seth made a great point when he said people who play video games are labeled as gamers, but people who watch TV are just regular people, they’re not called TV watchers. The idea that people who play games are somehow different or need to be set apart from mainstream culture is what perpetuates the negative connotation of gaming. Up until I watched this video, I called myself a gamer and now I feel kind of stupid knowing that every time I used that term I helped perpetuate aspects of the stereotype.

The panel agreed that an increasing number of people want more information about video games. Their readers want to know what to expect when they buy a game or want to know how the gaming industry affects today’s culture. I could talk on and on about the subject, but I’m going let the video talk for itself. Here are some key points that I found most interesting or relevant to entrepreneurs:

1. Defining the role of a video game journalist, do they just review games or can they do more?
2. The stigma surrounding gaming and redefining the term gaming.
3. The interaction between gaming culture with mainstream culture.
4. How the Internet is changing the face of journalism.
5. Job stability in a constantly changing job field.
6. Video games as its own separate media
7. The surprising popularity of video games.
8. Lessons in marketing, market penetration and word-of-mouth-marketing

Hope you enjoy this weeks series. Happy learning and Game On!